Through the Mirror, Darkly
by Keebo
Summary: Silent Hill decides that it's time for Albert Wesker to pay for his sins, and he's bringing Ada with him. What seems like a routine trip to HQ turns into a nightmare, and a man that thought he had defeated fear must come to terms with his human side.
1. We Come

Chapter 1: We Come

_"We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror."_ -Marshall McLuhan

Ada Wong sighed and stared out the window, adjusting her shades. The landscape was horribly boring as they rolled by, just trees and fog, and it seemed to be getting worse. "Tell me again why we couldn't fly in?" She glanced over at Wesker, frowning. She had left the red dress in the closet and settled for a pair of blue jeans and a red shirt for this mission. As was her style, she had patched a butterfly on the sleeve. She had brought along a green jacket, as well, but it was slung across the backseat.

"Silent Hill is out of the way. Just a little tourist town. Air traffic is pretty non-existent. We don't want to draw that much attention to ourselves," Wesker spoke calmly, keeping his eyes on the road. Ada never imagined that she would see the man driving himself anywhere, but he had been doing so for the past four hours with no sign of fatigue. In a complete departure from her tourist outfit, he was wearing his suit, only the coat was hanging in the back, freshly ironed so as not to get the tiniest of wrinkles. The man was nothing if not a stickler for details.

Ada was about to close her eyes, feeling what was left of the warm sunlight shining on her face, when the scenery changed. The car came to a stop. She stared in confusion at the small restroom facility, covered in graffiti, and the foggy lake beyond it.

"You've got to be joking," The town was on the other side of the lake. It looked lonely somehow. Desolate. For a tourist town, at least. A huge cloud of fog hung over it, although it was late afternoon.

"We have to walk the rest of the way," Wesker was holding a map that he had pulled from the glove compartment. "There's a path through the forest, then the graveyard, then the town."

"So this is a tourist town, but you can't drive straight into it?" Wesker pointed casually, and Ada's eyes followed. There had clearly been another road, but it was blocked off. 'WELCOME' the sign above the gate read, only the 'L' had fallen off. The whole thing had an ancient look, as if it had stayed that way for years. "We come. That's nice."

"...And appropriate." The door opened and Wesker stepped out, opening the back door and pulling out his suit jacket, then shrugging it on over his arms. The air was cold even for him. He tightened the gun belt around his waist, which he had loosened somewhere around hour two of the trip, and headed for the trunk. Ada slid her own jacket on and stepped out into the humid air, feeling a chill come over her immediately. She stood there for a while, staring out over the lake as if entranced, until a fanny pack was shoved into her arms. "Now you can really look the part."

"Tourists don't normally carry guns in these things," She strapped it around her waist and unzipped it, giving her easy access if the need should arise. "Or parasitic samples, for that matter."

"Just don't lose it." Wesker smiled slightly, something that never ceased to amaze his partner, and walked over to the head of the path that led off of the road. He stared along it for a moment, then, deeming it acceptable, started walking. Ada followed closely behind, hoping that his body might block the biting wind that seemed to sink right through to her bones and nest there.

* * *

When they entered Silent Hill, the first and only thing that Ada noticed was the fog. It hung over the town like a cloak, covering her sunglasses in residue. Then it slowly cleared away, revealing the husk of a building here, an old diner here (the window had been broken at some point and never fixed). Doors stood slightly ajar and some wide open, as if the owner had burst out in a dead run and forgotten to close the door behind him. Wrinkled newspapers drifted along the pavement. Utterly uninhabited. She felt cold dread and spoke the first words that came to her mind.

"Was there an outbreak?"

"We would have been informed," Still, even Wesker was confused to find such a popular little lake town so empty. It was like happening upon the artifacts of the Mayans in the middle of the United States. He listened for a moment and heard nothing. No footsteps. No cars. It was eerie. "Doesn't matter. We're not here to check on the townsfolk." He was looking at the map again. Ada heard it crinkle.

"I don't like this," She stepped out into the middle of the street, her sunglasses now hanging from the collar of her shirt. Wesker didn't have the luxury of removing his. "Why wouldn't they tell us if the town was deserted?"

"Maybe they were banking on our assumptions. What better place could there be for the facility?" Another look at the map. "We're not far from the warehouse." There was a dark circle on the map, which Wesker had marked in ink. Ada didn't wait, starting down along the road, right along the median. After all, there were no cars to worry about, and if there were, this miserable road trip would be over soon (or so she hoped).

* * *

Five minutes later, they came upon the bloody mess.

Wesker had smelled it faintly for some time. Ada hadn't been paying attention and stepped right into it. She nearly slipped but Wesker was there in a flash, grabbing her arm and yanking her upright almost painfully.

"Watch your step."

"Thanks for the heads up," Ada said with a smile that lacked humor. She had just stepped into what looked like the remains of a small animal. She winced, realizing that she had even felt a few tiny bones snapping under her foot. It was disgusting, and the smell made it that much worse. "Ugh. What was it?" She slid her heel along the concrete as she spoke, leaving a bloody streak. It looked about the size of a small rabbit, but something about it was wrong.

...And then she saw it. Its mouth was stuffed full of gauze. It's eyes, although rolled halfway back into its head, still somehow seemed to be staring at her. Accusing, as ridiculous as it seemed. Its skin was missing fur in several places and was marred by tiny holes, about the size a needle would leave. That is, if someone was crazy enough to stab it repeatedly with one.

"Who would do a thing like this?" she covered her nose. "I guess this town isn't completely deserted. There are still loons around."

Wesker nodded, but deep down he felt the beginning of a faint recognition. A flash of memory from years past... and something, he was certain it wasn't his own thoughts, as he'd felt no remorse over that situation, whispered 'Traitor.'

It was the beginning of what would be Hell.

* * *

A/N: _This is the extended version of chapter 1. Still lots of love and thanks to Gloomy Utopia, and also those of you who have reviewed thus far._

Next Chapter: The two are seperated and Wesker suffers from some particularly nasty flashbacks. (We all love flashbacks.)


	2. A Thin Line

Chapter 2: A Thin Line

_"You've never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive."_ -Jean Cocteau

The man that had once been one of Umbrella's finest opened his eyes to what looked like total darkness. He didn't recall when he had blacked out or why. There had been a time, back when he had been 19, when he had passed out in the lab for no particular reason and awakened feeling exactly like this... dazed, disoriented, confused. He was later told that he had whacked his head a good one on the edge of a desk on the way down. He had suffered from headaches for the next week.

Ada was gone, and the samples had gone with her, but that was in the back of his mind. His eyes began to adjust, and he realized that he wasn't in complete darkness, afterall. There was moonlight, but it was straining through the fog, casting a kind of otherwordly glow on the alleyway and the brick buildings that lined it.

Wait, his eyes had to adjust? He should have been able to see clearly, even at night. At least, that was how it had worked before.

His stomach ached. Not a hungry ache. He pulled himself onto his knees and ran his hand over it...

...And it almost went right through. He jerked his hand away as if he had burned himself. His fingers were wet, sticky, coated in deep red blood. Then the pain started. White hot flashes of it, surging through his stomach and chest. He remembered this feeling clearly. It was the way it felt after you had been impaled by a tyrant's claws.

'Impossible,' but he couldn't deny the pain, even if he shouldn't be feeling it so vividly in his inhuman state. Come to think of it, all of his senses except for that of pain seemed to have dulled considerably. "Ada!" he called, but his voice slammed against the brick walls and didn't go beyond.

'Really got yourself in a fix this time, huh?'

He was so busy musing over his current situation that he he didn't hear it sneak up on him. He felt a breeze against his left side, and something dark blurred past. His eyes shot to it immediately, but his vision was blurred.

No. It was just _too fast_ to see. Too fast for _human_ eyes to see. It was darting back and forth, making a strange sound. A familiar sound. It sounded like someone banging away at a computer keyboard. In any other situation, this would have been comforting. However, out here in the dark in Silent Hill with fog and human senses, this thing hopping around in front of him, comfort was the last thing on his mind. Hadn't the company informed him of all of their projects? What was this thing doing out in the streets? Ada's comment about a possible outbreak came to mind, but HCF was _careful_, dammit.

"What the hell are you?"

The thing clicked a few times in response, then it was right next to him, close enough for him to feel its acrid breath against his neck, and he insinctively shoved his hands forward, intending to push it away with enough force to send it out of the alley, unaware that the movement would send those flashes of pain back up through his abdomen. He cried out. It stopped moving for a moment and he could see it for what it truly was as it stared at him quizzically, hardly affected by his shoving.

This was someone's idea of a sick joke.

* * *

He and Birkin had only been employed by Umbrella for a month. He had awakened from a particularly nasty dream to someone, a male voice, screaming in the night. His blue eyes flew open and his first thought was, 'Something got out. Oh God something got out and it's going to come in here and rip our throats out and then it's going to kill everyone else in this lab, because it remembers who stuck the needle in and infected it with that poison. It remembers that I was smiling when I did it.'

Birkin was sitting up against the headboard of his own bed. It had only seemed natural that the two youngest and newest scientists share a room. Besides, Wesker found that he could tolerate William, and that had truly decided it. With moonlight streaming in through the small window, he looked like a ghost. Maybe that was because he had gone pale.

"Been going on for five minutes or so," he said quietly. His voice shook slightly and Wesker wondered if the same thoughts had crossed his mind. "I haven't heard anything else. Just that man screaming his lungs out."

Then there were footsteps in the hall. Both scientists tensed, hearing it come to their door. Then it sprang open and light flooded into the room. For the first and certainly not the last time in his lifetime, Wesker felt how thin the barrier between life and death was. His heart pounded until he could hear it in his ears, almost deafening.

"Don't leave this area!" a stern voice demanded. "Go back to sleep. We'll take care of this." Wesker recognized him as one of the facility guards, a dark-haired man that had to be at least seven feet tall, or so it seemed. He was holding a gun. He left the door standing open as he stormed down the hallway. The screaming was louder now.

Wesker slid out of his bed.

"I'm going."

Birkin stared at him. His eyes looked haunted, but he stood, anyway. His lab coat dangled to his ankles and Wesker wondered how he could sleep in it, and why. He personally found lab coats to be hot and uncomfortable.

"You're not leaving me in here by myself. Not with... whatever this is... going on."

So he had followed at a considerable distance. The room with the screaming man was at the end of the hall. It was a small lab. Shadows danced against the wall. There was a struggle.

Wesker slid around the corner and stood, completely still, his eyes on the mess before him.

"Go back to your dorm!" the guard screamed. He didn't care. Another scientist was going insane before his eyes. He was an older man, just beginning to go gray, his hair thinning in the center. His lab coat was a strange red color.

No. It only seemed that way. It was red because it was covered in blood, and it was covered in blood because he had been busy slicing something to pieces - something that looked vaguely human, but had probably only been a test subject. After all, he/she was on the examination table. The arms were slashed to thin ribbons with large, gaping holes here and there where the scientist's weapon of choice had stabbed. Only a scalpel could do that kind of damage. Wesker heard Birkin let out a small gasp from behind him.

The guard was trying to get the man under control. At some point, he had dropped his gun. His shoulder was bleeding where the scientist had slashed at him with the scalpel he know held tightly in his hand. The guard twisted his arm and he released it with a cry of pain and desperation, and then sobbed loudly. Almost as loudly as he had been screaming.

"Let me out of this fucking prison!" his voice was hoarse, but clear. "Let go of me! Let go of me, you bastard!" He kicked and flailed. The guard dragged him toward the door, still twisting his arms painfully. Wesker and Birkin moved out of the way.

As he was dragged away, the old scientist's eyes fell on the two young men, and he smiled an eerily knowing smile. 'He knows. He knows everything about me. About what I've been doing.' Wesker's heart seemed to stop.

"This place deals in human monsters, too, you know..." Blood dripped from his lab coat to the floor in a thin trail. "You think you're immune? Look what it did to me!" He was laughing then, a shrill, horrible laugh. Something had snapped. Something vital. His eyes were dead.

Then the guard... 'Sam.' Wesker recalled, dragged him around the corner and through a doorway and it was over.

He and Birkin had not talked that night. Nor had they slept.

* * *

The thing that now stood before Wesker, who was much older and much more experienced then the young man that had just started out in Umbrella, looked like a demented parody of the old scientist. It's mouth opened and a dry little croak came out, but it was trying to laugh -- trying to laugh because it remembered him, and maybe, just maybe, Wesker had been part of the reason for the man's downfall. Albert had learned later that Umbrella had been meaning to 'let the old man go' and replace him with two younger men. This, of course, meant he would be properly disposed of.

"Got you..." that voice managed to slur as its hand darted out and almost seemed to materialize on Wesker's shoulder. The boy that had hidden within the man for so long wanted to scream. The thing's touch was revolting, so wrong somehow, and its very existence seemed to shatter his concept of reality. Wesker was a man that particularly liked reality.

He shoved it again, adrenaline coursing through his veins, and it fell over with a dull thud. But then it was getting up again, quickly, faster than it should have been able to move, and it was trying to laugh again... only this time, it was succeeding. Little choked giggles came out, along with that strange typing sound.

Wesker turned, tried to leap, tried to dart... but ended up running as fast as his legs could carry him with the thing that looked like the old scientist behind him. His stomach seemed to have turned into nothing but a big ball of pain and he was choking on something that tasted like blood, but he ran.

And hated himself for it.

And hated Umbrella.

* * *

A/N: _I suppose that this chapter will make more sense to you if you've played the Silent Hill series and you understand the nature of the town. SH specializes in unearthing those things inside of us that we bury so deep they're nearly unretrievable and shoving them in our faces. In case you hadn't noticed, Wesker has been stripped of his inhuman powers and is now functioning as a human being for the first time in years, and the town isn't done with him yet._

_Hope you enjoyed, and whether or not you did, how about a review?_

Next Chapter: What Ada's been up to, and where's that damn warehouse?


	3. Reprieve

Chapter 3: Reprieve

_"Happiness is: looking into a mirror and liking what you see."_

The ground had changed. Ada had felt it. It had been accompanied by what sounded like an air-raid siren, and then it seemed that she had stepped from the solid concrete onto something rusty that squealed softly under her weight. She had looked down then, and had noticed that, along with the sun going down so suddenly, the ground had been converted to grating. Just to be sure, she looked behind her and saw that the ground there had also changed.

And Wesker was gone. She felt jarringly unsafe. She liked to think that she could handle herself, but Wesker's presence had a calming affect on her. It reminded her of another man from her past that she didn't like to think about. 'Feeling safe, because there's a _man _nearby.' She thought sourly to herself. 'How cliche of me.'

She reached into her fanny pack and pulled her gun from it, forcing herself to loosen her grip after hearing a particularly strange sound in the distance. She liked to think of herself as a somewhat scientific woman, but this sudden change defied all explanation. She wondered if maybe she had fallen asleep as was still in the car, or maybe they had had a wreck and she had hit her head and was dreaming now. Dreaming the dream of the soon-to-be-dead.

No, it was real. All of it. The paint seemed to be peeling away from all of the storefronts even worse than before. This wasn't just age. This was something else entirely. It was like the whole town was rotting.

"Wesker?" She cursed herself for sounding so insecure, then spoke up a bit louder. "Wesker!" Nothing. It was as if she had fallen into another universe. She couldn't feel his presence anywhere. All she felt... was alone.

She began to walk again, the grating groaning beneath her feet in a way that gave her shivers. What if it gave in? Where would she land? What if it never ended down there, and she just fell into blackness forever? What if this was Hell?

Something fluttered against her hand and she reached out and grabbed in, surprised at how the wind had picked up. It was the map that Wesker had been looking at before. On it, the warehouse was clearly marked. Part of her was glad, because she had an objective now, but part of her wondered how Wesker was getting along if he was in the same situation. Surely he would find her soon.

She forced herself to hold on to that hope. At the corner of a building was a broken mirror. It reflected her bloody heel as she walked past it.

- - - - - - - - - -

It had stopped following him. Wesker leaned back against the nearest wall and took deep, heaving breaths. He let himself slide to the ground. The pain, which had been pushed back by terror, now flooded back into him. Night had fallen. When had that happened? He had been too busy running from the demon of his past to see. He coughed into his hand and came up with blood. A lot of it.

Internal bleeding? Of course. But why was he still alive? When everything else suggested that he was fully human, how could he be surviving with an injury that only a tyrant could withstand?

More importantly, what had the monster he encountered been? It had looked too uncontrollable and pieced together to make a decent bioweapon, and the sounds had given away its position. Were there more of them?

'There are always more.' Wesker thought, and his mind went back to the mansion incident, although he willed it not to. It seemed he couldn't control his thoughts in this place any more than he could control his body. He closed his eyes, catching his breath, and it all flowed back.

- - - - - - - - - -

'---always more.' Another cerberus fell to his gun. There was no time to relax. Redfield gave him that look that he seemed to prone to. It was a mixture of awe and thankfulness. It was the look that all good guys had. It said, 'I would give my life for yours.' Wesker hated that look. They followed his orders without thought, because there wasn't time for thought. The dogs were almost close enough for you to feel their teeth at your heels.

They thought the mansion would be safe.

Only he had known. He and Bravo team. He hadn't enjoyed hunting them down, but it was necessary. So many things in life were necessary. So many things he had done had been necessary. Why couldn't they see that? Why couldn't they understand?

Jill's eyes, full of horror and betrayal. Chris's eyes, full of an unbelievable hatred that he could, in part, understand. Barry's eyes. Barry, thinking only of his family. So easy to control. So hard to understand.

The things that had been in that mansion, the Trevor girl in particular, were burned into his mind. He had seen Lisa before. She had fascinated him in a way when he had been young. But the creature that she became in the end was pathetic. Deplorable. Nearly mindless. How he had hated seeing her again. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He had betrayed them all, yes. But it had been _necessary._

- - - - - - - - - -

Now the only bitter taste in his mouth was that of his own blood. He didn't have a map. Not even a weapon. The only thing he could rely on was the training he had had. He felt that stealth would be a good idea, considering his injury, but how to do that while bleeding so heavily? He had memorized the general landscape and the direction of the warehouse, but now everything looked completely different. To make things worse, some areas were blocked off by heaping piles of refuge. Before, he could have just jumped easily over them, but the climb would prove too difficult as a human, even if he did have considerable strength.

He opened his eyes and almost leapt when he saw something move. Then he realized that it was only his reflection. A shard of a mirror stood against the wall at the opposite side of the alley. He looked himself over, removing his shades so that his human eyes could adjust better to the darkness, and, for the first time in a long while, found that he wasn't particularly pleased with what he saw.

He was a mess. The thing that had grabbed him had gotten something on him and it was disgusting, but even worse was the blood. His stomach looked like raw hamburger. He began to have another feeling that he hadn't felt since his change... He felt nauseous.

Turning his head to the side, he vomited. It was mostly blood and it made his stomach feel like a ball of pain again, but it still somehow made him feel better. He had forgotten what it felt like to just allow your body to act on its own. To release yourself to instinct.

Slowly, carefully, he began to pull himself back to his feet. The wall felt cruddy and rusty and he felt some of it crumble away against his fingers as he stood. He didn't feel as wobbly as he had before, but his legs still ached from the running he had done before. He wondered if the bleeding would ever stop. 'A hospital would be good right now.'

There had been a hospital in Silent Hill.

Wesker forced himself to remember the map again. There had been two hospitals. One had been on this side of town, and the other had been a mental hospital. Either way, both were sure to have supplies that he desperately needed. He could follow the signs.

Not feeling much better about himself or the situation, Wesker started to walk again, forcing himself not to look back into the mirror shard.

Strangely, indescribably, he was afraid of what it might reflect.

- - - - - - - - - -

A/N: Terribly sorry I've made you all wait so long! I know that this isn't much of a comfort, but I hope you enjoy this somewhat short chapter. I do plan on finishing this story. Eventually. You may hit me.


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